s largely on the ground that it would furnish the means for
social reforms, Bebel and others, however, on the entirely different
ground that if the upper classes had to pay the bill for imperialism and
militarism, the increase of expenditures on armaments would not long
continue.

The "radical" Socialists represented by Ledebour proposed that not one
penny should be granted the Empire except in return for true
constitutional government by the Kaiser. Certainly this was not asking
too much, even though it would constitute a political revolution, for
the majority of the whole Reichstag afterwards adopted a resolution
proposed by Ledebour demanding such guarantees. In other words, he would
make all other questions second to that of political power--no economic
reform whatever being a sufficient price to compensate for turning aside
from the effort to obtain democratic government, _i.e._ more power.

Bebel, however, said he would have voted for the bill if he had been
present, though he made it clear both at this and at the succeeding
congress that he had no intention of affording the least support to a
capitalistic administration (see below).

It appears that Bebel's position on this matter is really the more
radical. Ledebour and Singer seemed to feel that the further
democratization of the government depends on Socialist pressure. The
more revolutionary view is that capitalism in Germany, with the
irresponsible Kaiser, the unequal Reichstag election districts, the
anti-democratic suffrage law and constitution in Prussia, is
impregnable--but that the progressive capitalists may themselves force
the reactionaries to take certain steps toward democracy in order to
check absolutism, bureaucracy, church influence, agrarian legislation,
and certain excesses of militarism. (See the previous chapter.) The
position of the "radicals" was that capitalism was so profoundly
reactionary that even the shifting of the burdens of taxation for
military purposes to capitalist shoulders should not check it. Bebel's
view was more revolutionary. For even conceding to capitalism the
possibility of checking armaments and ending wars, and of establishing
semidemocratic governments on the French or English models, he finds the
remainder of the indictment against it quite sufficient to justify the
most revolutionary policy.

However, the main question was not really involved at this Congress. A
government might be supported on this tax questio